From: “Brenda Lange” Subject: BLOG, August 31, 2013

SIX MONTH PERMIT IN OUR HANDS!

This is a GREAT accom­plish­ment after a 2 year wait and many hours of writ­ing a BOOK con­tain­ing the need­ed documents.

The State Office of Social Ser­vices has blessed us with a 6 month per­mit for our orphan pro­gram, thanks to all the improve­ments we made in the build­ing projects, as well as the increased children’s pro­grams we have added to meet the new requirements.

This is the first step to the per­ma­nent doc­u­ment that we seek. Cape­na, our office man­ag­er and doc­u­ment pro­duc­ing expert, is work­ing dili­gent­ly to com­plete the need­ed changes so we can apply for our FINAL LICENSING DOCUMENT.

So all is great, as we have till Feb­ru­ary, 2014, to final­ize everything.

THREE SOULS ENTER GOD’S FAMILY….

after a bold gospel pre­sen­ta­tion at our Thurs­day food give out by Melis­sa Olmes­dahl, our new Youth Leader. One per­son who came for­ward was a BIG SURPRISE, as this teenage boy has been extreme­ly “rebel­lious” in the past. Melis­sa was float­ing on the clouds the rest of the day, since this group has not shown much inter­est in know­ing Jesus in the past few weeks.

I know every­one is off for a 4 day week­end, so I plan to keep this short. I hope all of you have a GREAT WEEKEND of FUN and hope­ful­ly splash around in a pool some­where to keep cool. Win­ter will be upon you before you know it.

All our kids are out hav­ing a great time play­ing on this beau­ti­ful sun shiny day. Our 10 teenage boys are just 1 hour away from their first bas­ket­ball match against one of our town’s youth teams. They are a bit ner­vous about it as they feel much more com­fort­able with soc­cer. So I’ll soon see how much the Bunny’s train­ing drills have helped (or not).

So like most “proud Moms”, the Bun­ny has to go cheer them on!

Aguas Vivas (Living Waters) boys are in BLUE uniforms. First half our boys did GREAT and were winning, but they didn’t have the stamina to last the 2nd half and lost 32 to 20. It was a great game and it taught the boys how important conditioning is if they want to win. BBB

Love and Hugs to all of you. Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma Team

From: “Brenda Lange” Date: August 24, 2013

THE FIRST AND THE LATEST

EVA, 13, seen in the back­ground of this pho­to, is the first child ever accept­ed into our Bala­ma feed­ing pro­gram (2001).
ORTENCIA, 18 months, and just learn­ing to walk, is our youngest addi­tion who came to us in 2012. Below, ORTENCIA, in her ear­ly days with us. She is held by her house mother.

ORTENCIA, 18 months, and just learning to walk, is our youngest addition who came to us in 2012.

Eva’s moth­er came to Bala­ma to vis­it her moth­er, Elisa, in 2003. Eva was almost 2 years old, and hav­ing up to 6 grand mal seizures a day due to brain dam­age received dur­ing her dif­fi­cult birth. Her Mom had tak­en her to numer­ous witch doc­tors to try and “cure” her, but noth­ing worked. While vis­it­ing Bala­ma, Eva’s moth­er died from drink­ing bad water, leav­ing Elisa with a BIG prob­lem as Eva was hard to care for. She’d heard about “this for­eign woman” who was doing amaz­ing things to help peo­ple get healthy, so she brought Eva to me.

Brenda tends to the wounds on Eva’s hands

When I first met Eva, she was actu­al­ly EATING the skin off the backs of her hands between her grand mal seizures. Our Pas­tors told Grand­ma Elisa that JESUS is the heal­er, not Bren­da. She accept­ed Jesus as her Lord and allowed us to pray for Eva. We real­ized that evil spir­its were a part of the prob­lem due to the witch doc­tor involve­ment. After prayer, her seizures decreased to 2–3/day. I con­tact­ed an MD friend of mine, Regi­na, in the USA, and she orga­nized med­ica­tions that would stop the seizures, and actu­al­ly brought them over her­self! Dur­ing her 3 week stay, Regi­na reg­u­lat­ed Eva on the med­ica­tion, and all her seizures stopped. We con­tin­ued to pray for Eva’s com­plete heal­ing, know­ing that long term med­ica­tion use may not be pos­si­ble since this med­i­cine didn’t exist in Moz. at that time.

Six months lat­er, Grand­ma Elisa didn’t show up for her week­ly food gift and the med­ica­tion Eva was depen­dent on. My staff asked all around, but no one knew where Elisa lived. With­out her med­i­cine, Eva’s seizures would return. TEN DAYS lat­er, Elisa limps into our mis­sion, lean­ing on a stick, because she had bad­ly cut her foot with her hoe while prepar­ing to plant her corn field. I was relieved to see her and imme­di­ate­ly asked how Eva was doing. Grand­ma respond­ed that Eva was total­ly fine, and she had NO SEIZURES dur­ing the 10 days she was off her med­i­cine! WE JUMPED FOR JOY, know­ing that Eva had received a mir­a­cle heal­ing! From that day for­ward, we nev­er gave her anoth­er of those pills, and she has not had a seizure since! I was told that she would prob­a­bly nev­er be able to walk, talk, or func­tion like a nor­mal child due to her deficiency.

NOT OUR EVA! She leads in the children’s choir, SINGS, jumps, runs, and DANCES to praise music, and speaks to me in 3 lan­guages! (Makua, Por­tuguese, and knows some Eng­lish) NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH JESUS!

ORTENCIA is a bun­dle of joy, brought to us by her elder­ly grand­fa­ther from way, way out in the bush. After his daugh­ter had died in child­birth, the grand­par­ents were hap­pi­ly rais­ing Orten­cia. But when grand­ma passed away, grand­pa was at a loss, as he was the last liv­ing fam­i­ly mem­ber. With help from his neigh­bors, he took great care of Orten­cia, but knew he need­ed to find some­one to raise her, as he real­ized he would not be able to care for her till she is grown. She’s a lov­ing, cud­dly, lit­tle girl, who loves her fos­ter moth­er, and is the youngest of our res­i­dent orphans. Now that she’s begin­ning to walk, look out world! Her she comes!

INSPECTORS HAVEN’T COME YET

We thank you for your prayers for favor with the inspec­tors. Their delay has giv­en us time to bet­ter orga­nize some of the new­ly required doc­u­men­ta­tion they require. Keep your prayers com­ing, as this team will show up some­time soon.

YOUTH NIGHT A SUPER FUN TIME

Melis­sa and 4 of our Youth Pas­tors hold “Youth Night” every Fri­day at 6pm to give Bala­ma kids an alter­na­tive to walk­ing the streets with noth­ing to do. Between 50 to 80 teens show up week­ly to start the night with games, among their favourite being sit down Vol­ley­ball (with a beach ball) and “hot pota­to” with bean bags. Eric installed 4 LED lights in the church before he left for South Africa, mak­ing it a great place to hold a Youth Night which ends with a great Bible les­son and refresh­ments. Not all who attend have accept­ed Christ, but they are lis­ten­ing seri­ous­ly to the week­ly les­son. Since most come back each week, we know they are more than just curi­ous. Keep pray­ing for our youth, as they are the up and com­ing GOD’S ARMY that will lead us dur­ing these End Times. A TEENAGER ON FIRE FOR GOD IS A POWERFUL EVANGELIST!

THANK YOU for all you are doing through prayer and giv­ing so that these awe­some kids can learn about our won­der­ful Jesus!

BLESSINGS,

Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Melis­sa Olms­dahl And the Bala­ma Staff

From: “Brenda Lange” Subject: Blog correction Date: August 18, 2013

Yesterday photo of Dixon, not Zito

There was a mix-up yes­ter­day, and the lit­tle boy’s pho­to shown in my blog is DIXON, not Zito. I for­got to cap­tion the pho­to, but as you can see, our “boy won­der”, who at 4 months of age weighed LESS than his birth weight and near death, is now WALKING inde­pen­dent­ly. At 22lbs (10 kg), Dixon is grow­ing stronger dai­ly. He’s still way behind the growth curve for a 2 year old, but he loves to eat and is doing his best to catch up with those his age.

I am post­ing the pho­to of Dixon again, in case you might have missed it yesterday.

Dixon, our “boy wonder” at 22 pounds, and growing.

Bless­ings, BBB

From: “Brenda Lange” Subject: BLOG Aug. 17, 2013

DISTRICT BASKETBALL COURT GETS A WORK OUT

The local Admin­is­tra­tor and I made the first run at the new bas­ket­ball goal as I pre­sent­ed the rebuilt half court with 2 new goals to the County.

Our bud­get would not allow us to com­plete the court, as rebuild­ing half the court cost $4,500, using 170 bags of cement. Cement and all col­ors of paints are in short sup­ply in north­ern Moz. right now due to the tremen­dous amount of new con­struc­tion going on in Pem­ba because of the nat­ur­al gas boom. The new road that will run through Bala­ma (some­day) is being built across the bush to the west of us and is eat­ing cement by the truck load.

GOOD SAMARATAN TAKEN TO A NEW LEVEL

A delayed ship­ment of med­ica­tions caused many Dis­trict Hos­pi­tals in our Province to oper­ate for the last 3 weeks with lim­it­ed life-sav­ing treat­ments for malar­ia or advanced infec­tions need­ing Injectable Peni­cillin. ZITO, in Nama­ra, devel­oped a staff infec­tion after a boil left an open wound over his spine. Thanks to a quick think­ing nurse who knew of a place we could get Peni­cillin, Cape­na was giv­en per­mis­sion to obtain Zito’s med­ica­tions at a remote clin­ic about 16 miles (30 km) into the bush. Zito has received his much need­ed injec­tions since Mon­day and is doing very well now.

Zito is feel­ing much bet­ter thanks to a quick think­ing nurse.

EGIDIO, one of the dorm boys, stuck some­thing in his hand on Tues­day caus­ing an infec­tion that also need­ed Injectable Peni­cillin. God gave us favor, as we once again drove to this remote clin­ic and were giv­en the last 4 vials they had. Now NO ONE in Bala­ma Dis­trict had any Peni­cillin, but God made a way! Cape­na was in Pem­ba yes­ter­day, when the MEDICATIONS ARRIVED at the state hos­pi­tal. The Pem­ba hos­pi­tal staff saw Cape­na at Social Ser­vices (next door) and imme­di­ate­ly asked him to truck the sup­plies to Bala­ma. HE HAPPILY COMPLIED. The drugs are now safe­ly in the phar­ma­cy and avail­able for imme­di­ate use. GOD SUPPLIES ALL OUR NEEDS ACCORDING TO HIS RICHES IN GLORY!

GOD’S SUN IS A FREE GIFT

For 30 days now, we have been unable to buy bot­tled propane for our cook stove. This caused us to go into “God’s mode”, which means we turned to God’s SUN for help. Heat­ing bath water by using solar show­er bags or thin met­al pots paint­ed black is very easy (if you use met­al pots, the water MUST TOUCH THE LID or the water won’t heat). Mak­ing SUN TEA is as sim­ple as putting a tea bag in a clean jar and plac­ing it in the sunshine.

Why waste cook­ing fuel when the need­ed ener­gy is FREE!

God’s Favor is with us as 1 truck of propane came in last week, and Cape­na hap­pened to see it when it entered Pem­ba. He fol­lowed it to the company’s load­ing dock and was able to buy 1 bot­tle direct­ly off the truck. The entire truck load was gone in a mat­ter of min­utes! His “crafti­ness” was a huge bless­ing to us. STAY ALERT! AS YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN GOD MAY SEND A BLESSING ACROSS YOUR PATH.

BUSH BUNNY SNAKE STORY!!!!

A true “bush per­son” is like the old cow­boys who read the ground instead of a news­pa­per. If you want to stay alive you have to know what “crit­ter” is slith­er­ing or walk­ing around in your area. As I walked to Eric’s house, my mind was on many things, when my eyes spot­ted a super FRESH snake trail that crossed his dri­ve­way. I froze. Scanned the area, and spot­ted the 1.2 meter (4 foot) spit­ting cobra lying about 30 feet (10 m) away under a man­go tree. (Immo­bil­i­ty is a defense mech­a­nism as it makes them hard­er to see.) I remained frozen but called for our guard, Rachide. The snake didn’t move. Rachide brought his 12 ft. (4 meter) bam­boo snake killing pole, but the tree’s branch­es were too low to use it. A spit­ting cobra can spit it’s poi­son into your eyes eas­i­ly from a 10 ft. (3 meter ) dis­tance. He said ROCKS and put his back-up plan into action. Call­ing for the man who makes our children’s cloth­ing, both men picked up 3 hand size rocks. They eased up to with­in 12 feet (4 m) of the snake, and on the count of 3, they did jus­tice to the best pitch­ers on any base­ball team, hit­ting the snake with 6 pow­er­ful­ly thrown rocks. Every rock hit the snake, caus­ing it to launch itself straight UP into the air as if strik­ing at an invis­i­ble ene­my. As the wound­ed snake flopped out from under the tree, Rachide fin­ished it off with his long bam­boo rod.

Moral of the sto­ry: Always, always be on the alert for “signs of your ene­mies”, (spir­i­tu­al and phys­i­cal), as they are usu­al­ly lurk­ing near­by, ready to strike if giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty. ASK in the name of JESUS and you shall RECEIVE HIS unfail­ing protection.
BLESSINGS FROM THE BALAMA TEAM BUSH BUNNY BRENDA MELISSA OLMSDAHL AND THE BALAMA STAFF

FROM BRENDA LANGE aka. “The Bush Bunny” Date: August 14, 2013

Melis­sa Olms­dahl is the newest mem­ber of our Moz. staff. She comes to us from George, South Africa, where she was the Youth Leader for that town’s CMA church. (Chris­t­ian Motor­cy­cle Association)

Melis­sa is a true bless­ing to our kids and to our staff. She picked up Linda’s respon­si­bil­i­ties of cook­ing, as well as the Women’s Bible Study and Prayer Walks and much, much more. She’s a nat­ur­al with the children.

Melis­sa doesn’t sit still, and I great­ly appre­ci­ate her cheer­ful atti­tude, even when the going gets tough. Her vocab­u­lary is grow­ing dai­ly, as is her cul­tur­al understanding.

So enjoy her let­ter and photos.

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Brenda

Foot­prints under the man­go tree
Hi everyone,

If you go to our recre­ation cen­tre, you will find thou­sands of lit­tle foot prints all over the show. When I look at these prints, dur­ing a qui­et time, I always smile as I think of the kid’s joy­ful play in this area. The kids can be so sil­ly, it’s so cute. There are so many activ­i­ties that we have run­ning up at the cen­tre. We do sports pro­grams for the big­ger kids, dur­ing which, the lit­tle munchkins will often come and mis­chie­vous­ly snatch the bas­ket ball away. I’ll admit, most of the time I will hand the ball over to them, I can’t help myself some­times Its get­ting it back that’s the chal­lenge, some of these lit­tle guys know how to run, good golly!

We have the bas­ket ball court and the soc­cer field up there, and at 8am and 3pm every day, our youth direc­tor, Berti­no, runs the sports pro­gram. He is real­ly reli­able. When­ev­er I get a chance, I go up and play with them. I’m not the best ath­lete, but sur­pris­ing­ly, the boys let me in their games. It makes me feel real­ly special.

I real­ly love those boys! They have all crept into my heart. They are the teenage orphans that are part of our orphan­age. They are real teenagers, take chances, get into trou­ble, but they all are so special.

There are eight of them, they are all super dif­fer­ent, but each of them have a spe­cial some­thing love­ly. They all help out with our Sun­day school pro­grams each week. They help with the lessons, and with con­trol­ling the kid­dies. This week that passed they did a pup­pet show to tell the sto­ry of Jesus and Zac­cha­es in the tree. The lit­tle kids real­ly love the pup­pets; they real­ly get involved in what the “pup­pets” are saying.

Our Sun­day school is always packed on a Sun­day morn­ing. Actu­al­ly our church­es are filled with most­ly chil­dren. But a wise man once taught me that the kids are Jesus’s lit­tle evan­ge­lists. A child on fire is the best cat­a­lyst. If you could only hear the vibra­tion in that lit­tle room when these kids sing, when they scream hal­lelu­jah! It’s intense­ly mov­ing. Now imag­ine with me, all these chil­dren scat­ter­ing after Sun­day school, as lit­tle feet do, and go and play out­side their huts, out­side their friend’s huts, singing the prais­es to Jesus that they learned, all over the village…

These lit­tle foot prints in the sand are the foot prints of our lit­tle evan­ge­lists. When­ev­er I see these lit­tle foot prints, I feel the face of God smil­ing down, as a proud father, recount­ing the steps of His lit­tle chil­dren… Thanks you Jesus for these lit­tle babes.

So anoth­er one of the things I get to do, is take part in Pre School, which we have every Mon­day Tues­day and Wednes­day. It is so much fun. The teach­ers teach them num­bers, and Por­tuguese words, as they only speak the trib­al lan­guage, Macua. I actu­al­ly ben­e­fit from these Por­tuguese lessons. Who knew that I would have to go back to Pre School to learn stuff.

I real­ly admire the teach­ers we have, they real­ly do an awe­some job with the kids. They might not real­ize it, but God is using them to enrich these babies lives.

I have start­ed teach­ing them Eng­lish words as well. Only three a day, I real­ly love to watch their lit­tle brains soak up all they can. I have been teach­ing them body parts, and they real­ly get a kick out of watch­ing me use my body to show them the parts. I real­ly enjoy spend­ing time with them. And of course, play time under the man­go tree is very action packed. I’ve been tak­en down and tick­led, had ten lit­tle girls play with my hair, at the same time… and played horsy. As I said, it’s a dream come true.

Last­ley, I want to say good­bye to my spe­cial friend Lin­da, she left us last week Sat­ur­day. Her time here in Bala­ma came to an end, and she has gone home to be with her many, many grand­chil­dren. Enjoy them Lin­da, your amaz­ing love will be missed around here. Thank you for being such an amaz­ing ves­sel for Jesus to work through. Love you so much, you are amazing!

It has been so good to share again. Love you all so much Be super blessed, and may the Lord Jesus real­ly touch you deeply each and everyday

xox­ox­oxo

From; Bush Bunny Brenda Lange August 3, 2013

BUNNY AND STAFF HOPPING CAUSE INSPECTORS COMING THIS WEEK!

A week ago we received a sur­prise inspec­tion from the State office of Social Ser­vices. They grace­ful­ly brought us a 20 PAGE DOCUMENT con­tain­ing this year’s new rules. They gave us warn­ing that a NATIONAL INSPECTION TEAM from Maputo would be at our door on Tues­day, Aug. 6th. We were in com­pli­ance with most of the rules, Praise the Lord!, BUT… did have to have to hang pic­tures in all the hous­es, buy more edu­ca­tion­al toys and a put in a sand box in both hous­es for the lit­tle chil­dren, put in a library in both Eng­lish and Por­tuguese for our High School kids, and add a SECOND moth­er to each home. So it’s been a busy week, but we are basi­cal­ly ready for their vis­it. Please keep us in prayer for FAVOR that they will be very hap­py with our program.

BUNNY PLAYS BASKETBALL

And has the sore mus­cle to prove it! Our teenage boys need­ed some couch­ing point­ers, as Melis­sa is learn­ing the game her­self. Most of our boys have no idea how to real­ly play the game as a team. Ever see 10 teens going in 10 direc­tions with no coor­di­na­tion what­so­ev­er? That is what I saw, so Coach Bun­ny, who once was an “A” string bas­ket­ball play­er, stepped in teach­ing pass­ing, drib­bling, and lay up drills. This Bun­ny hasn’t touched a bas­ket­ball in 38 years, so was amazed at how my brain remem­bered the moves but the body strug­gled to com­ply. Ugh! Bunny’s mus­cles weren’t ready for a 45 minute coach­ing ses­sion com­plete with demon­stra­tions! But the boys got a real thrill out of it, and learned a lot. I was amazed to see how fast they picked up the need­ed skills. I do plan more of it in the future, but plan to work out more slow­ly the next time.

Goats are doing fine. We have 102 at lat­est count as a few of the males went to mar­ket. The chil­dren are all healthy, and hav­ing a blast with their new sand­box­es, toys, and books. The new Mopone church is get­ting on its feet, after the vil­lage saw the Jesus film. About 45 peo­ple showed up last Sun­day for a church meet­ing. Mpaca vil­lage has had a church for over 4 years, so their response to the Jesus Film has been small so far.

Please remem­ber to keep us in prayer on MONDAY NIGHT for the inspec­tion, as that will be our TUESDAY MORNING here in Bala­ma. We are 7 hours ahead of CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME in the USA.

NOTE ABOUT ERIC IN South Africa Eric left a few days ear­ly due to a fam­i­ly emer­gency. His broth­er, who has suf­fered for some time with a type of blood can­cer, had tak­en ill and was in ICU on life sup­port. Eric faced a 5 day dri­ve to get there, but made it in time to say his good­byes before His “born again” broth­er went to meet Jesus.

The beau­ti­ful card shown above is from the artist’s eye of Eric Dry.
Eric is doing well, and was able to help me resolve a trac­tor prob­lem by phone yes­ter­day. Our trac­tor sucked air into the fuel line, pos­ing a major prob­lem since I didn’t know how to bleed the lines and get it run­ning again. Eric patient­ly walked me through it on the phone, and with­in 35 min­utes, we had the trac­tor work­ing again. Please keep Eric and his fam­i­ly in prayer for God’s peace and heal­ing as they deal with the loss of his brother.

I love and appre­ci­ate ALL OF YOU, and please know that your prayers DO MAKE A DIFFERENCE in what goes on over here. Thanks for all you do so that our chil­dren may have a hap­py life full of love, and a good education.

P.S. Lin­da Stan­ley will be fly­ing to South Africa (RSA) on Sat­ur­day, Aug. 10th, to be with Eric a few days before she flies on to the USA the fol­low­ing Tues­day night. Lin­da tells us that God has lift­ed her call­ing to Bala­ma, so she does not plan to return to us. We are VERY grate­ful for her serv­ing heart and all she has taught our mis­sion­ary team and the chil­dren in the 3 years she’s been with us in Bala­ma. We will miss her more than words can describe.

Lin­da Stan­ley and one of the chil­dren. She express­es the lov­ing heart of Jesus, as she speaks “Com­fort”, to each one of us in this photo.

BLESSINGS IN CHRIST, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange and the Bala­ma staff Lin­da Stan­ley Melis­sa Olmsdahl